Friday Ramble - Swimming in Light

We awakened to gray skies yesterday, to rain reveling in its own refrain and beating a staccato rhythm on the roof that shunned meter and metronome. Puckish breezes cavorted in the eaves and ruffled tiny leaves in the garden like tangy decks of playing cards. A thousand and one little waterfalls appeared out of nowhere, and impromptu streams danced their way through village gutters carrying twigs, oak leaves, pine needles and catkins.

Here and there were precious islands of stillness. Sheltered by overhanging trees, the ornamental pond in a friend's garden was like glass, its little school of white and scarlet koi hovering almost motionless in the early light, their open mouths like tiny perfect "o"s. Sometimes, they seemed to be swimming in light.

On our morning walk, we (Beau and I) took note of a rusty puddle under the corroded wheelbarrow in a neighbor's driveway, and I remembered that humans have been using rust (iron oxides) in artistic undertakings as far back as the prehistoric caves of Lascaux. I would be a happy camper indeed if I ever managed to produce something a scrap as vibrant as the magnificent Chinese horse.

I also remembered that a heady brew of iron oxides, carbon dioxide and water is probably where all sentient life began. The Japanese word for rust is sabi and together with wabi, another Japanese word meaning fresh or simple, it forms the expression wabi-sabi, an enfolding aesthetic or worldview centered on notions of transience, simplicity and naturalness or imperfection. Rust is fine stuff, be it in aesthetics, Asian philosophy, cave art, wet driveways or old wheelbarrows.

Clouds and rain, then sunshine and blue sky, then back to clouds and rain again, who knows what mid-May days will hold? When good weather prevails, Beau and I go into the woods, and we lurch along for an hour or two, a long way from the miles of rugged terrain we were once able to cover, but there is gratitude in every step.

On wet days, we listen to a little Bach or Rameau on the sound system, read and drink tea. We watch raindrops dappling the windows, the painterly way in which trees, little rivers and old wood fences are beaded with moisture and shining in the grey. Each and every raindrop is a minuscule world teeming with exuberant life, whole universes looking up at us, great and bumbling creatures that we are. Rain or shine, up and down, in and out, them and us, it's all good.

Thursday Poem - When I Am Wise

When I am wise in the speech of grass,

I forget the sound of words

and walk into the bottomland

and lie with my head on the ground

and listen to what grass tells me

about small places for wind to sing,

about the labor of insects,

about shadows dank with spice,

and the friendliness of weeds.

When I am wise in the dance of grass,

I forget the name and run

into the rippling bottomland

and lean against the silence which flows

out of the crumpled mountains

and rises through slick blades, pods,

wheat stems, and curly shoots,

and is carried by wind for miles

from my outstretched hands.

Mary Gray from Wild Song: Poems of the Natural World

Wordless Wednesday - Trinity

Froth and Fragrance

One day there are no leaves or flowers on village trees, and the next day the same trees have embraced the season, their voluptuous canopies alive with birds who dish out madrigals at sunrise and trip the light fantastic from branch to branch until the sun goes down. Their pleasure is obvious, and oh, the fragrance, the splendid pinks!

Crabapple trees, magnolias, flowering almonds and plums seem to leaf out and flower overnight, and wonder of wonders, they are alive with madly buzzing bumbles, honey bees and wasps. Dusted with pollen from stem to stern, the little dears are in constant motion, ecstatic to feel sunlight on their wings and forage for nectar on a balmy morning in May.

Here comes another fine summer of prowling about in gardens wild and domestic with camera and lens, drinking in light and gathering nectars of my own. Now and then, I will put down my stuff and dance with the joyous bumble girls. Ungainly creature that I am, I hope no one is watching, but the bee sisters won't mind.

Sequestered, Week 294 (CCXCIV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gifts and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

Magnolia in Bloom

Friday Ramble - Bloom

Sunlight, blue skies and fluffy clouds overhead, birdsong in the overstory, avian courtship rites and nest building everywhere - the village is opening out and greening up before our eyes as Beau and I ramble about and peer into hedgerows.

Spring does not make a quiet entrance this far north - she comes over the hill with an exuberant bound, reaches out with a twiggy hand, and everything bursts into bloom. When we went off to the park a few mornings ago, the first narcissus of the season were blooming in a sheltered, sunny alcove, and we both did a little dance. These were the Poet's daffodil (Narcissus poeticus), often identified as the narcissus of ancient times and one of my favorite spring bloomers.

How can this week's word be anything except bloom? The modern word comes to us through the Middle English blo or blome, and Old English blowan meaning to open up and flower lavishly, to glow with health and well-being, to be as dewy and flushed with sunlight as a garden tulip or an early blooming orchid in a wild and wooded place. It all begins with the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots bhel-, bhol-, bhlē- bhlō-. In that ancient tongue which is the reconstructed common ancestor of all modern European languages, they mean to grow, swell or unfold, to leaf out or come into flower, to flourish and thrive.

Perhaps a better word for this week would be sex, because that is what springtime's lush colors, alluring fragrances, velvet textures and warbling ballads are about - Mother Earth's madcap dance of exuberance, fertility and fruitfulness. Every species on the planet seems focused on perpetuating its own heady genetic brew, and the collective pleasure in being alive is almost tangible.

Forsaking appointed chores, we potter around in the garden, wander about in village thickets, stare into trees and contemplate the blue sky for long intervals. It's simply a matter of blooming wherever one happens to be planted. Beau is already a master of that splendid art, and his silly old mum is working on it.

Thursday Poem - For the Children

The rising hills,
the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
The steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers,
go light.

Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

Wordless Wednesday - The Music of a May Morning

Awakening

The eastern Ontario highlands are awakening, wildflowers, ferns and tiny saplings coming up through the bleached and tattered fallen leaves of last autumn. Every sunny alcove in the woods seems to be tenanted by hopeful sprigs of green.

The situation makes one feel like dancing, if it can be done without tumbling ass over teakettle into a prickly thicket along the trail. An exuberant lurching about is probably the best we can do, but we (Beau and I) just have to express our gratitude to the Old Wild Mother for giving us such a sublime morning in May.

Three cheers for Mama. She certainly knows how to put on a show.

Sequestered, Week 293 (CCXCIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries—but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.

Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Pot of Gold

Friday Ramble - The Music of What Happens

Around the corner, three song sparrows were trilling their hearts out from a rooftop. Their pleasure in the day and the season was echoed by a construction worker a few doors away belting out Doug Seeger's “Going Down to the River” as he installed drywall in the old house on the corner. The door of the place was wide open, and his rendering of the gospel classic was off key, but it was soulful and fine stuff indeed.

Listening to the sparrows and the guy doing the drywall, I found myself thinking of the mythic Irish hero, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool). He thought the finest music in the world was not the belling of stags, the baying of hounds, birds singing in the overstory or the sound of happy laughter, but "the music of what happens". 

This morning, the crows left an offering in the birdbath, a tiny, dead field mouse with its entrails spilled out and floating forlornly around in limp spaghetti-ish circles, not really the way one likes to start the day. Downcast, I went back to the deck and held my nose resolutely over the mug of Italian dark roast waiting for me there. Later I donned rubber gloves, gave the wee mouse back to the earth, scrubbed out the birdbath and refilled it with clean water. The crows will probably return with new booty tomorrow, and we will commence clean up operations all over again.

Tulips in every shade of the rainbow are starting to bloom, but it is the reds that dazzle - the blooms are almost incandescent in the early sunlight, so bright they hurt one's eyes. Daffodils and scarlet fringed narcissus nod here and there, and violets sprinkle the garden. Magnolia trees in the village are flowering and their perfume lingers everywhere. Wonder of wonders, the first few bumble girls of the season have appeared, just in time to partake of the crabapples that are starting to flower. When Lady Spring finally shows up here, she hits the ground running.

What an amazing trip this season is, what wonders there are to feast one's eyes on; trees leafing out, wildflowers popping up everywhere, feeders in the garden full of songbirds. If I were to stop and take photos of every splendid thing we (Beau and I) see on our morning walks (and everything is splendid at this time of the year), we might not get home again for weeks.

Rain is in the cards for today, and that is quite all right. We need wet stuff, and by that I do NOT mean snow or hail. Collection barrels have already been dragged out of the garden shed and installed under downspouts. Wind chimes have been taken out of storage and hung in the crabapple tree. My new hummingbird feeder will arrive by the end of the day, and nectar has been brewed for it.

When I opened the sundeck doors before dawn this morning to let Beau out, the fragrance of dark, rain wet earth wafted in, and I felt like dancing.

Happy Beltane (May Day)

Thursday Poem - Come to Dust

Spirit, rehearse the journeys of the body
that are to come, the motions
of the matter that held you.

Rise up in the smoke of palo santo.
Fall to the earth in the falling rain.
Sink in, sink down to the farthest roots.
Mount slowly in the rising sap
to the branches, the crown, the leaf-tips.
Come down to earth as leaves in autumn
to lie in the patient rot of winter.
Rise again in spring’s green fountains.
Drift in sunlight with the sacred pollen
to fall in blessing.
                        All earth’s dust
has been life, held soul, is holy.

Ursula K. Leguin

For Beltane (or May Day)

This is the eve of Beltane (or May Day) in the northern hemisphere. The word is Scots Gaelic in origin and marks the beginning of summer. Below the equator, this is the eve of Samhain (also Scots Gaelic) meaning "summer's end". As we northerners drift toward warmth and light, our southern kin are drifting toward the dark half of the year.

Nights are are still cool, and it will be another week or two until full colonies of bloodroot are up and blooming, but early specimens lift their gold and white heads in protected nooks here and there in the woods. In other years, there were wild yellow orchids blooming, but it will be a while before they put in an appearance, soon to be followed by trout lilies and columbines.

Bloodroot flowers are breathtaking, and the shy white blooms with their golden centers are dear to my heart. They are something of a seasonal marker for me. Encountering this one glowing in its flickering, stone-warmed alcove, I felt like kneeling and kissing the good dark earth where the flower made its home—it was that perfect. Ignoring painful and protesting knees, down I went in the dead leaves and stayed there for quite a while, nose to nose with the dear little wonder and happy as a clam. Getting to my feet again was quite an undertaking.

The interval was one of the wild epiphanies I love so much, especially in springtime when the north woods are just coming to life. Call it a moment of kensho, one of those fleeting intervals of grace, quiet knowing and connection that I like to call "aha" moments. Forget the fancy stuff - this is the ground of my being. As long as I can spend time with trees and rocks and wildflowers, I can handle the big life "stuff", most of the time anyway. Add lakes, loons, cormorants, herons, sunsets and full moons to the equation, please. Also Canada geese, swans and cranes.

Happy Beltane (or May Day), everyone. May there be light and blooming and fragrance in your own precious life, in your particular corner of the great wide world. Wherever you make your home on the hallowed earth, may all good things come to you at this turning of the wheel in the Great Round.

Early Potterings

And so they continue... routines of staying home and doing things like gardening, yard work and baking, of taking long rambles with Beau in early morning before our favorite haunts are tenanted by unleashed dogs and their thoughtless owners, by sleepy walkers, bemused gawkers and weekend warriors. 

Nights are still cool here, but early mornings are perfect for wandering, and we seldom encounter anyone else on our outings. In the overstory, grosbeaks serenade the rising sun. Below them, woodpeckers act as a rhythm section and put on a fine performance. Adding harmony to the work in progress, puddle ducks paddle up and down the creek under the trees, slurping up tasty morsels from the bottom and waggling their tail feathers. Geese fly back and forth between fields and the river. Now and then, a heron or a Great Northern Diver (loon) passes overhead. 

This morning, a cormorant flew over our heads on its way north.  As I watched it go, I remembered that the word cormorant is actually a shortened version of the Latin corvus marinus meaning "sea raven". For centuries, cormorants were considered members of the corvid family, and were commonly known as sea ravens. With its glossy dark plumage, aquamarine eyes, orange throat pouch and bright blue mouth, the bird is surely one of the Old Wild Mother's most exquisite creations.

The early flickering sunlight in the woods has a buttery, caressing quality. Greenery is coming up everywhere through the tattered remnants of last autumn's finery: delicate fern fronds down near the creek, the leaves of trilliums, hepatica, trout lilies, violets, squill, wild columbines and tiny hyacinths on higher ground. 

Whenever we pass through her grove, I greet the Beech Mother and pat her silvery bark. I would love to be able to hug her, but she is an old tree and my arms are not long enough to go around her magnificent circumference.

If this morning's post sounds a bit like a litany, I suppose that is exactly what it is. Winter has packed its bags and is departing. We are happy to see it go. 

Sequestered, Week 292 (CCXCII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

As time went by, I realized that the particular place I'd chosen was less important than the fact that I'd chosen a place and focused my life around it. Although the island has taken on great significance for me, it's no more inherently beautiful or meaningful than any other place on earth. What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it's flat or rugged, rich or austere, wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received.

Richard Nelson, The Island Within

Maples in the Pink

Friday Ramble - Radical

This week's word is radical, a natural choice for this madcap season when greenery is popping up all over the place, and we are thinking about planting flowers and veggies in our gardens. It comes to us through the late Latin rādīcālis meaning having roots, and the Old English wrotan meaning to root, gnaw or dig up, both entities originating in the early Indo-European wrad meaning branch or root. 

Synonyms include: fundamental, basic, basal, bottom, cardinal, constitutional, deep-seated, essential, foundational, inherent, innate, intrinsic, native, natural, organic, original, primal, primary, primitive, profound, thoroughgoing, underlying, vital. They also include pejorative words such as anarchistic, chaotic, excessive, extremist, fanatical, far-out, freethinking, iconoclastic, immoderate, insubordinate, insurgent, insurrectionary, intransigent, lawless, left wing, militant, mutinous, nihilistic, rabid, rebellious, recalcitrant, recusant, refractory, restive, revolutionary, riotous, seditious, severe, sweeping, uncompromising and violent.

I have always admired the indomitable spirit of plant entities putting down roots in unexpected places, sunflowers sprouting from cracks in the asphalt on busy thoroughfares, wildflowers coming up between the concrete slabs in sidewalks, tiny trees planting themselves in granite rock faces and glacial dropstones.  

Those who live by different beliefs are often called "radical". Ditto those who live outside the mainstream, who don't follow accepted social standards and tend to do their own thing rather than just placidly following the herd like sheep. The word has been used in that context since the sixties, and being called "radical" might have been a compliment then, but these days it is often pejorative.

How odd that a word used to describe the unconventional, independent, mildly eccentric and rather peculiar actually means something as lovely, organic and simple as being rooted or connected. Do I consider myself radical? Anyone who sketches, scribbles, takes heaps of bad photos, rambles in the woods in all sorts of weather and talks to trees is a tad peculiar, so I suppose I am. Rooted.

This week's word is one of my favorites in the English language. It signifies (for me anyway) a bone deep kinship with everything that matters, with the good dark earth under my feet, the sky, the sun and the moon, the stars over my head - with timeless notions of rebirth, transformation, belonging and non-duality.

Roots down, branches up and away we go...

Thursday Poem - Bio

I am a leaf-dance in the woods.
I am the green gaze of the ocean.
I am a cloud-splitter in the sky.
I arrived robed in red
out of nowhere and nothing.
I whisper between pages.
I disappear in the painting.
I rest between musical notes.
I awaken among strangers
in a country I never imagined.
I am timbales and bells,
a parade under your window.
I am the riddle I cannot solve,
hands on the clock's face,
seven crows on a branch.
I am the one whose footfall
changes the pattern of stars.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Wordless Wednesday - Little Green

For Earth Day

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

Marshall McLuhan

The Dutchman's Breeches

Dutchman's Breeches

(Dicentra cucullaria)

One can barely see them at reduced photo size, but draped along the stem and flowers in the second image are the season's first strands of spider silk. Since the north woods are still cool and wet, perhaps the spiders wore coats and gloves to do their work and sheltered under leaf umbrellas. I applaud their determination to get out there and spin in such brisk weather conditions. In a week or so, Dicentra cucullaria will carpet the woods, but these early bloomers were blooming in a protected alcove against a rock face warmed by the sun.

The feathery gray-green foliage and nodding white flowers like upside-down pantaloons were endearing, and the filaments of spider silk held my attention for some time with their shimmer and floating windblown motion. Larger and more lavish clumps were in bloom several feet up on the rock face, and I briefly considered either climbing up or dangling from the top to capture them with the camera, but decided to avoid such assuredly risky pursuits and shoot from right where I was standing. No fancy footwork or rock climbing this year...

The woods are slow to leaf out and bloom this time around, but these images were perfect for a late April week, a few days before Beltane or May Day.  They need no description from this doddering photographer and occasional wordsmith, although I have done just that this morning and tried to describe them.

Sequestered, Week 291 (CCXCI)

Happy Easter!

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Turn off the lights. Go outside. Close the door behind you.

Maybe rain has fallen all evening, and the moon, when it emerges between the clouds, glows on the flooded streets and silhouettes leafless maple trees lining the curb. Maybe the tide is low under the docks and warehouses, and the air is briny with kelp. Maybe cold air is sinking off the mountain, following the river wall into town, bringing smells of snow and damp pines. Starlings roost in a row on the rim of the supermarket, their wet backs blinking red and yellow as neon lights flash behind them. In the gutter, the same lights redden small pressure waves that build and break against crescents of fallen leaves.

Let the reliable rhythms of the moon and tides reassure you. Let the smells return memories of other streets and times. Let the reflecting light magnify your perception. Let the rhythm of rushing water flood your spirit. Walk and walk until your heart is full.

Then you will remember why you try so hard to protect this beloved world, and why you must.

Kathleen Dean Moore, from Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril